William Shakespeare

Before conjuring up an April 1564 christening in Holy Trinity Parish Church, Stratford-upon-Avon, the traditional starting point for a biography, a few words about my own ambivalence about writing Shakespeare's life. By all means, move straight to the baptismal register in Chapter One, or if it is the plays, and only the plays, that interest you, then head to Chapter Two when William Shakespeare begins his career as a dramatist. But, if the biographical project itself interests you - and it fascinates me almost but not quite as much as the plays themselves - then stay with this Prologue in which, inspired and provoked by Dutton's wry comment, I explore what happens when we, when I, attempt the impossible. Smith offers a powerful reminder of what's at stake. 'Shakespeare's stock is so high that to recruit him to your ideological team is a real coup.' Suddenly having the man on our team, not just his writing, becomes important. We feel the need to recruit the author himself, not just his works. This may be why biographies should still be attempted. Yes, any and all biographies are fictions, but the lives they tell were not. Our picture of Shakespeare the man is, in the end, created by the questions we ask of the archive we have, by the value we place on different kinds of documentation: those questions and values have, for centuries, been predominantly driven and informed by elite, white men. We need different eyes looking at Shakespeare. His plays matter to us, but what we write about the man matters too--